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28 November, 2009

What a fantastic evening for a hill race, Three Rock was buzzing with activity. Greeted by Barry 'lock hard' Tennyson as always doing a fantastic job on the traffic and parking. We had 230 runners out which was a (welcome!) reduction on last years numbers, obviously the races being made more difficult is now paying a dividend. Sun shine, clear skyline-no midst and a chance for some of the runners who got lost on Saturday to redeem themselves. Mike Long did an excellent job marking the route and gave a DETAILED discription of the route before the start of the race. The usual suspects quickly took up their familar positions at the front, cutting across the forest the leading pack went over the marked tape and proceeded up a ride through the forest going the incorrect way, thankfully Mike Long in hot pursuit managed to scream at them that they had diverted off the track. About 15 runners lost some ground, but i dont think it made any different in the overall contexts of the results. Their was a long climb from the start up as far as Fairycastle with little flat or down hill running. From Fairycastle it was down hill all the way, the dry weather and terrain made for a fast descent for the sure footed. Good to see Bernard Fortune back and as always puting in a strong result. Jenny McCauley was the fist female home in a time of 33.04 and with a very strong finish overall, followed by Katharina Baldinger in 2nd and Karen Bothwell in 3rd. An injury to Aidan Woods & a detour from Ronan Guirey, allowed Eoin Keith to take his first league win of the season in a time of 28.54 with Tim Charnecki and Ronan Guirey behind. John Farrelly was the first M40 Dessie Shorten was the first M50 and Jane Porter the first F50 and Roisin McDonnell was the first F40. The route differ slightly from last year but the general consensus was that it was excellent. Jimmy 'the pirate' Synnott came in at 10th place and brought me for a walk down memory lane as he recalled winning the race in 1988 - at that time their was perhaps a dozen running in total - how times have changed.

Congrats to Brendan O Connor and all his volunteers for doing such an excellent job in organising the race with such military precision.Very impressive set up.

In spite of ample car parking space their was quite lot of traffice congestion, and runners will have to start using the car pooling. Prize giving was in the Step Inn who had been forewarned about the avalanche of runners that were going to descend on the place. Again parking proved to be an issue with a representative from the Mountainview Inn calling over with car reg details that were blocking exit from the car park and threatening that tyres would be slashed if cars not moved! (this would only ever happen on the Southside of course). All in all a super evening was had by everyone.